Barack Obama, right, and Mitt Romney,left, shook hands at the end of the third and final presidential debate in Florida, Oct. 22.

Many Indians are following the U.S. presidential election with keen interest. But America’s system can be confusing, with breathless talk about “swing states,” the “Electoral College” and the “ground wars” over who can bring more voters to the polls.

Here’s India Real Time’s guide to the election, including a cheat-sheet on what to watch for when the returns start coming in on Wednesday morning India-time. It is shaping up to be one of the closest presidential contests ever.

1. The Magic Number is 270, not 50.1%: India’s parliamentary system of picking prime ministers looks relatively simple compared to the U.S. approach to electing presidents. Voters technically won’t be voting for Democrat Barack Obama or Republican Mitt Romney when they go to the polls Tuesday, but instead will be casting a vote for a candidate’s “electors” – that is, a slate of representatives in states who will cast votes later on their behalf.

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This Electoral College was built into the U.S. Constitution because the country’s founders were skeptical about having elections determined by direct popular will and also wanted to ensure small states had a voice in national affairs. There are 538 total electors, with each state having a share equal to its number of representatives and senators in Congress. So, Florida has 29 electoral votes, Iowa has six, and so on. In nearly all states the winner is awarded all the state’s electoral votes (except Nebraska and Maine, which have other methods of allocating votes).

Whoever gets a majority of electoral votes on Election Night, 270 or more, will win. (See this link for more on the process, including when electors actually meet and vote for the President and Vice President. )

Note that how a candidate performs in the overall national tally – the popular vote, as it is known – is not what determines who gets elected. In practice, whoever wins the Electoral College generally wins the national vote too. But three times (the last in 2000), the winner of the popular vote has lost the Electoral College vote and therefore the presidency.

Mr. Obama won 365 electoral votes and 53% of the popular vote in 2008. Many polls show this contest to be a dead heat. (The latest WSJ/NBC News poll gives Mr. Obama a 48% to 47% lead nationally.) Here’s a Wall Street Journal story showing just how close it is.

India’s parliamentary system has an indirect way of picking prime ministers too, of course. Voters elect Members of Parliament and the party with the most strength generally forms the government and chooses the PM. But it’s arguably a lot more straightforward than the Electoral College.

2. Why New York Doesn’t Matter But Ohio Does: It might seem peculiar to Indians watching this from afar why the candidates aren’t really fighting over voters in the three most populous states in the U.S. – New York, Texas, and California. It would be like Indian candidates not campaigning in New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.

The reason for this: The winner-take-all Electoral College system in most states discourages candidates from campaigning anywhere they can’t win a plurality of votes. Since Texas is considered a “safe” Republican state (Mr. Romney is way ahead in polls) and New York is a “safe” Democratic state (Mr. Obama is way ahead in polls) the candidates are investing their time and resources elsewhere. Over time, each side has racked up several safe states, leaving a fight over a small number of so-called “Battleground States.”

Each side is plotting the various combinations of states they could win to get 270 electoral votes.

3. When India Will Start Seeing Results: Election results will start trickling in on Wednesday morning in India. CNN is broadcasting the returns in Asia. You’ll have to be an early bird if you want to catch all the key action: the polls in Florida and Virginia close at 5:30 a.m. IST, while Ohio and North Carolina are among those that close at 6:00 a.m., and Pennsylvania and Michigan are in the 6:30 a.m. batch. As mentioned above, those are many of the states that are going to decide this election.

Once polls close, the vote counting starts and the TV anchors will inform the public of whether they can make a “projection” or call on who is going to win. It’s possible that at least a few states will be “too close to call,” meaning the media number-crunchers have to gather more data before they can make a projection. Some of the pundits will read a lot into this. If one candidate was thought to be far behind in a given state and the initial read is “too close to call” that could be a positive sign for that candidate.

Polls in Colorado, another state that could play a major role in deciding the outcome, close at 7:30 a.m. IST.

4. Inside the Demographics: Even before the outcome of the election is known, there will be a lot of very specific analysis on TV of the demographic breakdowns of each candidate’s supporters based on the “exit polls” with voters. Who is winning college-educated whites? Who is winning single women? Who is winning people making more than a certain amount of money? Based on that data, the commentators will make some guesses as to who is having a better night. Operatives in American political parties are paid a lot of money to target individual demographic groups.

The changing ethnic demographics of the U.S. have been much discussed in the lead-up to the election. As Ron Brownstein of the National Journal noted this week, whites made up 90% of the voting population in 1980 but just 74% in 2008. That year, Mr. Obama won the White House partly because he dominated the growing minority vote, winning 95% of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics.

A recent Wall Street Journal story said that “Rapid population growth means that Hispanics carry more weight this election than ever before,” noting a poll that showed Mr. Obama may again need a big boost from Latino voters to make up for a disadvantage with white voters.

5. The Turnout Game: There’s one thing all big democracies have in common. Getting voters to “turn out” at the polls is a huge part of winning a campaign. In India’s 2009 Parliamentary election, nationwide voter turnout was 58.2%, though in some state elections participation rates have been far higher than that. In the U.S., voter turnout was 64% in 2008, with especially high levels of voting by young people, blacks and Hispanics.

In the U.S., the conventional wisdom among political analysts is that in a close election like this whichever side mobilizes its “base” of support and gets them out to vote in greater numbers will be victorious. Most polls show results of “likely voters” – people considered a strong bet to come out and vote.

Both of the major political parties have sophisticated “get-out-the-vote operations,” with armies of young people going door-to-door to persuade tepid supporters and strong supporters alike to get to the polls and cast a vote. Indeed, in the states that allow early voting, they’ve been knocking on doors and calling voters for weeks. Here’s a great WSJ story that tracks how this ground war is playing out in three crucial counties.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204707104578093250914927498.html

6. If It’s Too Close to Call: Don’t be surprised if the election isn’t over on Wednesday. If it’s very, very close and one side or the other contests the outcome of one or more states, there could be a drawn out legal process to determine the winner. Several key states provide for automatic recounts if the margin is within 0.5%.

Amol Sharma is an India Correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Follow him and India Real Time on Twitter @AmolSharmaWsj and @indiarealtime.

About India Real Time

India Real Time offers analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime(at)wsj(dot)com.